Go to: http://www.massinc.org/index.p…
Please read an essay there by Daniel Winslow and the other three [may be more by now} and the “Budget Brief”.
In my opinion, as per earlier posts of mine, the budget imbalance could be solved by changing the focus of government to heal social problems, not punish the poor.
1. http://bluemassgroup.com/s… I am in and out of those poor homes – and take issue with the idea touted by Daniel Winslow that a so-called “lifestyle analysis” – would lead to billions in savings – almost none of these people have cars, and if they have cell phones, they are prepaid blood suckers and there is no land line because they cannot get one.
2. http://bluemassgroup.com/s… The real budget buster is the incarceration mentality. It is $45,000 a year plus for every incarcerated adult felon in the State system. At the same time, 90,000 jobs requriring a community college degree go unfilled depriving the state of taxpayers and consumers. Answer is education not incarceration.
3. Much of the so called “underground economy” results from illegal immigration. But much of illegal immigration results from the impact of NAFTA, such as the destruction of a million Mexican farmer’s livelihoods, and – well here is the detail:
The solution to the structural budget deficit is to change the focus of government from social eugenics that spends enormous sums to punish the poor, to management of social problems that seeks to extinguish problems, not punish and blame. Both the immensely swollen DSS budget and the prison industry thrive on elitism, social eugenics, and produce nothing but costs.
Deb Sirotkin Butler
How much does the Commonwealth spend on incarceration of non violent offenders?
What do you suggest as far as systemic reform? How do we stop punishing the poor and start seeing improvements in their communities? What sort of “management of social problems” do you suggest, any ideas?
Judges have plenty of leeway now, and thye have so abused it that the Legislature got off its duff long enough to pass mandatory minimums. Of course, the drunken husbands of state reps. still get to bundle offenses so the three-strikes won’t apply to them – and it cound’t happen without the help of a judge!
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p>BTW – we closed our mental hospitals due to the progressive movement – now, you don’t want them in prison for crimes they committed?
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p>Bean – there are dangerous offenders out there. We just had a child almost killed on Cape because some idiots threw a Molotov cocktail through a bedroom window after an argument. What should they get? Self-esteem counseling?
…it was Ronald Regan who destroyed Mental Heath Care. Boy now there’s a real progressive.
Ronald Reagan was not a friend of the mentally ill in the United States and gutted Social Security benefits for them. This comment is as worthy as PP’s comment that “we closed our mental hospitals due to the progressive movement”.
You remember? That misguided liberal policy of “mainstreaming”? Of course, it ended up being “Main Streeting” since the mentally ill now live in parks, under bridges and in transit stations, but at least we don’t have those inhumane hospitals to contend with! How about we have a BMG forum dedicated exclusively to posting solutions to homelessness and mental illness? There are a lot of great thinkers on this site, let’s put ’em to work to solve some problems!
Except the “money saved” was not used to address the underlying problems.
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p>As it happens, I DO have ideas, and will post them at a rate of about one a week, so that maybe those ideas will get noticed.
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p>What do you think of “Contract for College” – fact is we [my husband and I] have done this 7 times so far with no state supports, and three of those kids were considered mentally ill – and what they needed was reparenting in a “normal” environment – each is their own story, though.
to any felony, not just violent crimes. Prisons are stuffed with three-time losers on minor felonies, including drug possession. I’d rather see us legalize and redirect our hard-earned tax dollars from incarcerating addicts to offering treatment and rehabilitative programs. Such programs won’t work for everyone, but it’s unclear to me that current system is working for anyone. We currently incarcerate, according to a recent Pew Center study, 1 in 100 people (1 in 9 for African American men!) – I believe I have read that this is a higher percentage than China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and other such beacons of enlightenment. Pew’s conclusion is that it’s killing state budgets without offering corresponding improvements in public safety. Let’s get over the Willie Horton scare tactics and start looking at more effective alternatives.
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p>Re Mental hospitals, these were closed under Reagan – one more thing among so many I still hold against him after all these years. I well remember how in the early 80’s mentally ill homeless people suddenly appeared on the streets of Chicago. Prisons are an expensive, inhumane and ineffective way to deal with mentally ill people who commit petty crimes. Pete Early’s book Crazy is a phenomenal read on the subject.
Crime is beginning in schools that pass students socially and homes that don’t parent.
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p>Education actually costs less then incarceration.
Most people react to the effect after the problem exisits and not the thing that caused it before it became a bigger problem so changing that way of thinking is a societal education issue that is needed.
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p>Interestingly the only time drug addiction in the US was starting to decline was during the Nixon Administration when Drug Treatment was pushed over this utter failure of Drug Enforcement/Lock em up or the disastrous International War on Drugs. Basic principle of Market economics, No Customers = No Market for the product. Within that is Marijuana should be decriminalized for personal use. George Bush, John Kerry, Al Gore, Bill Clinton all smoked pot. Time to get real on this issue.
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p>One beef I have is when education is discussed it is always university prep oriented. How about more funding for Trade Schools?. You can make a good living and no one ever has their job out sourced. We talk a lot about the emerging Green Economy but don’t seem to get that a vast majority of the jobs will be manufacturing and construction related to achieve it. Without funding for trade schools green manufacturing will go overseas also and we will import workers to install those systems.
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p>Tax incentives for inner city redevelopment would be good. This company has made a living doing just that; Struever Bros, Eccles and Rouse Proves a basic point that this kind of Economic Redevelopment thinking can be done and be profitable.
A pretty terrible perspective, if you ask me. Can’t a person be educated and still work at a trade? Or would some people prefer, for whatever godforsaken motives, that there always be a subservient, uneducated, perpetually powerless underclass tearing at one another’s throats and voting Republican out of bigotry and ignorance? I wonder whom that might benefit…
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p>That’s what trade school do. They educate. Are you implying you must go to college to be educated?
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p>How many grads with advanced degrees in the exciting world of Computer Programming are out of work?
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p>Knee jerk demonetizations of the working class gets me fired up as one of the monstrous failures of our current economic outlook is the loss of manufacturing jobs and the way trades are looked down upon like some how that means arts, philosophy and humanities are not available to you. Bunch of
BSPopycock.What if, after a couple of years, they don’t take to the particular trade? A college education gives a person more options, judging by the vast number of jobs that list a Bachelor’s degree as a requirement.
If you want to go to college, you should be able to-I think that’s what Bill Clinton was trying to say (though I haven’t seen the context).
Is there a current shortage of plumbers, carpenters, or electricians in the United States, or is the market already pretty well saturated? Personally, I don’t know the answer to that question. Who is going to decide which students should be routed to the trade schools? At what age?
Going to a trade high school does not preclude going to college. But likewise, it allows you to earn a living from day 1 if you prefer not to pursue advanced academic, as opposed to practical, studies.
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p>As far as a college degree being a job requirement – that’s just a side effect of steering so many kids who aren’t academically inclined into college, to make a high school’s stats look good by being able to say “x percent of our graduates go on to pursue a four year degree” (while failing to mention that y percent actually achieve one). College once indicated advanced academic study and knowledge. Now, a BA doesn’t guarantee that you can spell, know the parts of speech, or are able to multipy in your head.
An acquaintance of mine is a navy vet and has a JD. He works in a construction trade – he’s in California retrofitting older structures to withstand earthquakes.
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p>I know of one adjunct faculty member at UMass Boston with an MA in English, but makes his money as a full time industrial interior painter.
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p>My friend was told he wasn’t “academically inclined” for college. He came from a voke school and scored 700 on his SATs. Got a football scholarship to a small school and now has at least his bachelor’s and two graduate certificates. He’s also a skilled carpenter and welder. I don’t know how he supports himself now, we lost touch, but I doubt his college education is a burden – he has so many more doors open to him today because of education.
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p>What’s one thing all the above people have in common? If they get injured on their blue collar job, they have skills and credentials to find work in other arenas. Oh, what a stupid idea!
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p>Lack of education will always be more of a burden then an education that isn’t applied towards a career. No one is ever burdened by the ability to think critically and to better understand the world in which we find ourselves.
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p>Peter’s attitude is that not everyone in certain economic classes should go to college. Because that’s ultimately who this attitude is directed at. Bill Clinton wasn’t talking about the wealthy class or the class of people who come from several generations of college educated parents. It’s a given that their kids will go through college and probably not be saddled with mountains of debt.
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p>Education is freedom. Allow people from working class homes and first generation college students to graduate and make their own decisions. No one is stopping a 22-year-old kid from becoming an electrician, a line cook, a mechanic, etc.
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p>Who knows, perhaps a college educated electrician or mechanic will be better suited to go out and start and grow her or his own small business? What a stupid thought, PP!
already have to prove they have insufficient income or assets before they qualify for cash assistance, food stamps or other subsidies.
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p>Dan Winslow sounded a little bit like a judgmental small town selectman I knew in the 50s. When I was a girl (apologies to grandchildren) a local “welfare board” composed of appointed persons in each town or city made those decisions of who or who did not get public relief, which was paid for by local revenues.
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p>As you can imagine those judgments were based on the individual appointee’s personal values, personal history of feuds,and in sometimes, personal good friends or relatives. A couple of authentic compassionate conservatives named John Volpe and Frank Sargent reformed that system in the late 60’s and created a Department of Welfare, now called the Department of Transitional Assistance.
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p>Today the DTA has a cadre of trained social workers who have on their desks a number of big fat manuals and about 10 pages of forms they use to help applicants fill out to determine their eligibility for cash assistance and other subsidies. DTA has another cadre of hard working staff to “case manage” their clients to help them put their lives back together.
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p>And guess what, with all the manuals some big fakers get through and some worthy poor don’t qualify because they have too many assets. And with all the case work, some people’s privacy is invaded and some people get enough support to get their lives back together.
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p>Don’t see much money to save here!
Daniel Winslow’s essay on MassINC blames people who are poor for the state’s budget problems–a longstanding tactic used to divert attention from the real causes of those problems.
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p>There’s no question that entitlement programs such as MassHealth cost a lot of money. It’s also no doubt true that the underreporting of income results in an underground economy that cheats the U.S. Treasury. But Winslow then leaps to the assertion that these two things are connected and that large numbers of recipients of entitlement programs are committing fraud. He provides no statistics to back up his assertion.
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p>There are certainly some recipients of entitlement programs who underreport income. But many upper-income people also do so. And entitlement programs don’t just help people with low incomes. Medicaid also pays for nursing home care for thousands of middle-class people.
that boston.com listed “correction officer” as one of its recession-proof “growth industries” in a recent feature (sorry, for some reason I couldn’t find the link) Might be true, but pretty sad.